The Center of Everything (19 page)

“She gonna be okay?” Ed asks, looking at Travis, like I speak a funny language that only Travis can translate.

“She’s fine, Ed. Really.”

Ed taps out a bit of the marijuana from the bag onto a small white paper, rolling it into a tight cylinder. He hands it back to Travis and makes another one for himself, lighting the tip with a match as he inhales from the other end, his eyes closed. I can see the fiery tip shriveling up, disappearing.

“You know that’s really bad for you?” I ask. “It kills your brain cells, and if you get caught, you’ll never get financial aid in college.”

Ed laughs at this, three short exhales, smoke coming out of his nostrils. “Okay,” he says. “What’s your name again?”

“Evelyn.” I don’t see what’s so funny.

He nods and smiles. “Okay, Evelyn, you need to relax.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Just say it. Just try. Come on. It’s alllllllll goooooooood.”

I hear Deena coughing in the back, and when I turn around, I see Travis holding her shoulder, offering her a sip from his Coke. “It’s okay,” he’s saying. “It’ll get better.”

The police officer and Nancy Reagan told us that if someone ever offered us drugs, we should say no and leave immediately.
Call your parents if you have to,
Nancy Reagan said.
Call anyone
. But there is no way to call my mother or Nancy Reagan out here in Ed Schwebbe’s van, and it’s too far to walk in the cold. There’s nothing I can do but sit, and wait, and maybe study. I open my backpack, get my history book out.

“You’re going to do your homework now?” Ed asks. He looks at me from under his long bangs, his eyes two little slits. “You’re so weird. You’re such a weird kid.”

“Excuse me if I care about my future,” I say. But really, I know I don’t need to study anymore. I have an A in history. Mr. Graham likes us to memorize important dates of important wars and then write essays about them as if the people who lost the wars had won, and the people who won the wars had lost. Some people don’t like this, but Mr. Graham says it is important to understand that history books tend to be written by the people who won or killed everybody else. He liked my last essay very much: “How the Native American People Kept the European Invaders Off Their Land.”

Ed watches me read, still smoking. It’s very annoying, but when I look up, he smiles. “You sure you don’t want any of this?”

I narrow my eyes. “Are you trying to use peer pressure on me?”

He inhales again, pinching what is left between his finger and thumb. “What? No, it’s just—”

“What?” I ask. He’s speaking so slowly. It’s driving me crazy. People should talk at a normal speed or maybe not at all.

“Okay,” he says, closing his eyes again. “Okay, I know I’ve only known you for like an hour.” He inhales again. “I don’t want you to take this wrong.”

I could be getting things done in the time between each of his words. I could get out and run around the van and jump back in in the middle of one of his sentences, and I wouldn’t miss a thing. “Just tell me,” I say. “Spit it out.”

“It just seems like you need to smoke pot more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.”

I wave the smoke out of my face. “What?”

He nods. “It’s sad that the people who won’t smoke pot are usually the people who need it the most. I mean, somebody like you, if you smoked pot every day for like a year, you might be normal at the end of it.”

My glasses have slid down to the tip of my nose, but I leave them there, so Ed Schwebbe looks smaller through them, like something you might see at the bottom of a microscope. “I’m abnormal, Ed? Is that what you’re telling me?”

He scoots closer to his door and bends one of his long legs up on the seat. “Whoa. Okay, don’t get mad. I’m just saying that I can, like, look at you and
see
how uptight you are. I mean, I can
see
it.” He puts his hands up to his eyes, like I’m the sun, too bright for his eyes. “It’s like this bad vibe you give off. It’s so intense.” He turns away. In the back, Travis and Deena have gotten quiet, and I’m not sure what they are doing. I don’t turn around.

The van is hazy with smoke now, getting into my nostrils, seeping into my brain. If the police catch us, they will do drug tests, and I will never get financial aid. We’ll all get in trouble. No one will believe that I was being good.

I don’t care. I don’t care about my brain cells anymore.

I look up at the dark, starry sky, and I think about the
Challenger
, how it blew up, leaving just a huge white cloud in the sky, white streaks snaking out of it. Mr. Torvik rolled in a television so we could watch the news reports, but all they kept showing was that same white cloud, the people in stands, the families of the astronauts, looking up at the sky and crying. Mr. Torvik was crying too, because this was the first time they were going to take a teacher up in space. He’d applied to be on the
Challenger
himself, and had even made it to the final rounds and gotten an interview, but in the end they’d chosen someone else.

“Ed, I need to ask you a question.”

He nods and looks at me slowly. “Sure. That’s fine.” His eyes are glassy, shiny, almost like Samuel’s, the skin around his eyes puffy and pink.

“Okay, you need to be honest with me. Don’t worry about my feelings, or my vibe or whatever.”

He nods again, looking down at his hands. “That’s cool. I can do that.”

I take a deep breath, thinking of what exactly it is I want to know, how I want to ask it. I want to know, right now, just how bad things are going to be, once and for all. “Okay,” I say. “What would I be on a scale of one to ten, as far as, like, general attractiveness goes? Besides the vibe thing.”

He looks at me carefully, still smoking, for so long I am not sure he understands what I am asking. Finally, he frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t like that kind of question,” he says. “I don’t like that, giving girls numbers. I think it’s bullshit.” He taps a long, thin finger on his chest. “It’s who you are, Ellen. There are no numbers for that.”

I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean. Just tell me what you think somebody else would say, who did believe in giving girls numbers, okay? Go ahead. One being like totally disgusting no way, and ten being somebody like…” I nod in the direction of the backseat but do not turn around. “Somebody like Deena.”

He shakes his head. “Deena would be more of a nine. Christie Brinkley would be a ten.”

I nod, impatient, bracing myself. “Fine. What would I be?”

“Well…” He looks at me carefully. I can see he does not want to hurt my feelings, wincing for me, as if he is the one about to get the bad news. “Well, I guess, maybe, like a…” He bites his lip. “A four?”

“A four.” I nod, seeing a number line in my head, one through ten, four so close to nothing, to hideous. So there it is. I am the limping antelope. I cannot be allowed to reproduce.

Ed leans toward me, touching me on my arm. “Hey, don’t get mad. Come on. You told me to tell you.” He closes his eyes and knocks his head against the headrest of his seat. “See? That’s why I totally hate that number shit.”

I look at my face in the mirror on the visor, at my sad, sleepy eyes. A four is probably about right. “No, it’s okay, Ed. Thanks for being honest.”

He shakes his head and gets out the Baggie again. “Okay, but you know what it is that makes you a four? It’s not so much the way you look. It’s that vibe I was talking about. I mean, you’ve got to get rid of it. Seriously.” He reaches out his hand and moves it in quick circles above my head. “It’s like I can see your aurora, and it’s all black and shit.”

I stare at him, trying to understand. “My what?”

“Your aurora. It’s black, man. Black.”

“You mean my aura?”

He nods, closes his eyes again, and holds up his hands so both his palms are facing me. “Yeah. You’re so uptight. Wow. I can feel it too. I mean, I can actually feel it.”

I am trying hard not to cry now. “I’m not uptight, for your information, Ed. I’m a Christian.”

Ed nods, inhaling again. “That’s cool. It is. It’s cool. You know what I think?”

I look out my window, away from him, wiping tears off my cheeks. “No, Ed. Tell me.”

“I think if Jesus would have been alive today, he would have been all about pot. I think he would have really grooved on it, and that’s why he would have gone to jail today.”

I shake my head. The moon is just a sliver in the sky, the edge of a saucer. “Well, I think that’s a really offensive thing to say.”

He shrugs. “Well, that’s what I think. I’m allowed to think that if I want to, just like you’re allowed to think what you want. It’s all supposed to be about peace and love, right? Right?” He squints at me. “And man, I have to tell you, your vibe doesn’t have anything to do with peace or love, man, and it is
in-tense.
It’s freaking me out.”

I have to wait before I answer, to get a hold of myself. When I’m ready, I turn and look right at him, at his puffy little eyes. “Okay, well, Ed, your aura tells me you smoke too much, and you’re a stupid pothead who talks too much. How about that?”

“Whoa. Whoa.” He opens his eyes and holds both of his arms out straight, his palms facing me again, but this time overlapping each other, blocking my face from his view. “You know what? You’ve got some bad energy. You really do.”

I lean forward so I can look at him and say something back, but he moves his hands again, covering his view of my face.

“I don’t think I want your energy in the van,” he says, almost yelling now. “Really, not to be rude, but you’ve got to get out of the van.” I move, and he moves his hands again, the rest of him huddled against his door. “Please, okay? I’m asking you. Vacate the van.”

Travis’s head appears between us. “What’s going on?” His sweatshirt is on inside out.

Ed brings his hands in closer to his face, covering his eyes. “Get her out of the van. She’s got bad energy. She’s freaking me out. She’s got to get out of the van.”

“Fine,” I say, shutting my book. “I’m leaving. I’ll walk.”

“Hold on,” Travis says. “We’ll walk with you, Evelyn. But just wait a minute.” He looks at Ed again, who still has his hands over his eyes. “Wait outside.”

I slam the door behind me and walk to the back of the van, watching the exhaust drift up and dissipate into the cold night air. Travis and Deena stumble out, Deena still trying to put on her hat, both of them laughing. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Ed,” Travis says, sliding the side door shut. “It’ll be okay.”

The van pulls away, the back tires kicking up muddy snow. Travis turns in a small circle, Deena orbiting around him, holding his hand.

“I’m over here,” I say.

“Jesus, Evelyn, what’d you say to him?” Travis asks, laughing. But he doesn’t really care. He is preoccupied, trying to help Deena put on her gloves.

I rub my head with my mittens. “It wasn’t me. It was my bad aurora.”

“We’ve got so far to walk,” Deena says, her voice like a little girl’s, singsongy and soft. “I need to sit down for a minute.” She starts to go down into the snow, but Travis stops her, pulling her back up by her elbows. “No no,” he says. “Let me give you a piggyback ride. Come on. We’ll all go together.”

So we stumble through the snow like this, the three of us, Deena up on Travis’s back, me walking alongside, like a camel, or a mule. Halfway through the field, Deena slides down off Travis’s back into a pile of snow. She looks up at Travis, laughing, her hat crooked on her head, still adorable, maybe even more so. He stops and sinks down to his knees and then onto her. They roll around like that for a while, like puppies, pushing snow in each other’s faces.

I keep walking. I will not watch for cars when I get to the highway. If I make it, I make it. If I don’t, I don’t.

“Evelyn! Wait!” Both of them are shouting my name, still laughing, trying to stand up, falling into each other.

But I keep going. I walk the rest of the way home by myself. The stars are out, bright and numerous, but they are all still. There are no falling stars tonight, no asteroids, no flaming rocks hurtling through the atmosphere. The stars stay right where they are, twinkling high above, and none of them have anything to do with me.

“Bullshit,” my mother says, her arms crossed. She looks like she’s been crying. “I called McDonald’s, and I talked to Trish. I know you left at ten, Evelyn. I know you left with two boys, older boys, and I know now”—she looks at her watch—“it’s after midnight.”

I shake my head. Her voice seems shrill, the light from the kitchen too bright.

“Do you have any idea how scared I’ve been for the last hour? What thoughts have been running through my head?” She points at her head. “You’re fourteen years old, Evelyn. Fourteen. I need to know where you are in the middle of the night. Okay? That’s basic.”

I say nothing. Usually I can come right back, say something quick and sharp, but now my tongue feels heavy in my mouth, and I can’t think of anything to say at all.

She shakes my arm. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I step away from her. “You’ll wake up Sam.”

“Don’t worry about Sam. I’m talking to you right now.”

Her face is close to mine, her eyes only inches away.
She has such large pores,
I think. I’ve never noticed this before, but now that I have, I can’t stop looking. They’re huge. Enormous. I touch my own nose softly, wondering if I have pores this large and have just never noticed before.

“Evelyn? You’re acting really weird.”

“I’m fine,” I say, still looking at her. Her hair has changed too. There are lighter strands, wiry and sticking out from the curls. Gray hairs. She’s thirty years old, and she’s getting gray hair. I move toward her, holding a strand of her hair between my finger and thumb. “Mom, you’re getting gray hairs. Did you know that?”

She swats my hand away. “Evelyn?”

I close my eyes, nod. Everyone can see it. “I’ve got a bad aura, Mom.”

This stops her. She moves her hands up to her face, cupping her cheeks. “What?”

I nod again. “It’s black. My vibe, my aura, is black.” I shrug, looking over her shoulder. “Do we have some chips or anything? Pretzels?”